Many people know about the terrible impact of flat feet. People with flat feet experience aches and foot pain that people with arches never face. Although it doesn’t seem like it, foot arches exist for a particular functionality. They influence your foot’s design in numerous ways, enhancing certain abilities and minimizing various health concerns. Here are three reasons why foot arches are important and their purpose.
Weight Support
Your feet literally carry the rest of your body. They endure the full force of your weight and gravity. Arches help your feet evenly spread your weight, allowing your heel and toes to endure equal parts of strain. Without arches, many people end up applying more weight and pressure onto one part of their foot, causing pain and aches in those certain areas. Arches also create a natural spring in your step. This minimizes the intensity of the weighted pressure pushing down against your feet. Like springy shoes, arches add a bounce that diffuse the force of your body’s weight, decreasing strain.
Ground Impact
The natural bounce of an arched foot further lessens its impact with the ground. People with flat feet hit the ground with more surface area. Like a belly flop, hitting the full foot against the flat surface of the ground creates a large, intense, and painful collision. Arches break up your foot’s surface area, raising part of it and decreasing the part of your foot that comes in contact with the floor. The arche’s bounce also diffuses the impact because it minimizes the force your feet apply to the ground.
Foot Flexibility
An arch’s natural curvature and bounce gives your foot added movement control. It increases your flexibility, allowing you to easily move your feet in various ways. Arches help you curl and flex your feet. They also create evenly distributed weight and muscle strength between your heels and the balm of your feet, allowing you to stand on your toes longer.
Foot arches provide numerous functional purposes, making them an important feature in your foot’s design structure. One of the many benefits of wearing orthopedic footwear is arch support, allowing them to cater to your arches’ purposes. Taking care of your arches ensures you get to enjoy the benefits of this natural foot architecture and further minimizes potential aches and pain.
